Wings of Earth- Season One

by Eric Michael Craig

  They felt it together inside him. It was his mind, but her feelings were there. It wasn’t like a voice. It was her mind. And his. Blended and distinct at the same time.

  Is this what it feels like to be an augment?

  No. This is what it feels like to be with the Un Shan Takhu. When you connect to their technology, it feels like this. I have connected my Urah Un to yours. She broke contact, and he tumbled back into his own awareness.

  She still held his wrist firmly in her grip and as his knees collapsed Kai and Kaycee caught him together and eased him up onto the bed.

  “What the frak just happened?”

  “That’s how it feels to use Shan Takhu technology,” she said. “It’s much bigger than the sensory augmentation of the glove. You don’t use Shan Takhu tech. Your awareness exists inside it.”

  “I will feel that any time I touch someone with this glove?”

  “No, only another person with one on. And only if you touch their glove.” She grabbed his hand with her other hand and although he could still feel all the physical realities of her body and its functions, there was no connection to her awareness.

  “It’s a bit mind altering, isn’t it?” Kai asked.

  He nodded, staring down at his very empty feeling hand.

  “I was the first person to discover that,” she said. “Can you imagine how it felt when I had nobody around to help me figure it out?”

  “Lonely,” he said. He glanced over at Qara. She was still out on the exam table across the room, but he understood what he felt from her the first time they met.

  “Her telepathy helps,” Kai said. “Otherwise the isolation shock after a separation event can be quite a challenge. It’s why she didn’t want you to touch her.”

  “I’m the reason she’s hurt?”

  Kai shook her head. “She’ll recover. But in truth you’re only a minor complication. She was so deep into her link that when the intruder got shot, she felt that like it was her own body.”

  “The plussers call it traumatic transference syndrome,” Kaycee said.

  Ethan looked down at his hand again and shook his head. He scratched at his palm, feeling his own fingernails dragging across his flesh like razor blades slicing through his skin. He winced.

  “Is it hurting?” Kaycee asked, flipping it over and pulling it up toward her face to look at his palm closely.

  He shrugged. “A little maybe. It feels warm under it.”

  “We should get it off of you,” she said. “Make a fist and then open your hand and flick your wrist like this.”

  He watched as she did it. A fine seam appeared on the base of her hand near the wrist and she slid a finger on the opposite hand under it. It lifted away and shriveled up like a dead spider.

  “Until we know which way your brain tissue is headed, it might be a good thing to limit your time using an Urah Un,” Kai said.

  “Let’s rewind to that for a minute, can we?” he said, as he peeled his own off and watched it curl up. He dropped it on the bed beside him and stared at it, fighting down the fear that it might reactivate and crawl back onto him somewhere. “What’s really going on with my brain? Did Qara make me a plusser by accident?”

  “You don’t have any genetic alterations,” she said. “Technically, that means you aren’t a plusser.”

  “Your brain appears to have traumatic stress deformation,” Kaycee said. “It’s vaguely similar to the modifications done in a proxy chamber when the Institute creates a STIF.”

  “Vaguely similar. That means I’m not like you either?”

  She shook her head. “It looks like you suffered a deep psychological trauma and your brain is building new synaptic wiring around the damaged regions. The human brain is very… elastic. It adapts. Usually it takes a long time to rewire the synaptic pathways, but yours seems to be evolving very quickly.”

  “Is this going to affect my ability to command?”

  “I don’t think so, but I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll clear you for work as long as you promise you’ll let me know if you have trouble with anything. No matter how small it is.”

  “What about this?” he asked, pointing at the Urah Un as he slid off the edge of the bed.

  “I guess it’s yours,” Kai said.

  “Just don’t let anyone else on the crew touch it,” Kaycee said. “It would probably put them in a coma. Or worse.”

  “Then you keep it,” he said.

  She shook her head. “You should learn to use it,” she said. “Just remember you have to go slow and I should supervise.”

  Kai smiled at him, picking it up and shoving it in his coverall pocket. “Welcome to the club.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Ethan sat on the ConDeck holding his spider glove in his hand. He’d been training with it a little more each day. Both Kaycee and Kai took turns working with him to help him adapt to using it.

  As simple as it looked, he’d realized it was not something to use casually.

  On the third day he’d put it on alone in his quarters and somewhere between there and the middeck he’d accidentally brushed one of Marti’s data trunk ports. He didn’t remember doing it, but he woke up with both Kai and Kaycee glaring down at him like a pair of old-world Catholic nuns.

  He’d seen pictures of nuns in school and didn’t realize that expression could be made with a human face. Now he was a believer.

  Ammo glanced at him as he slipped the Urah Un into his pocket.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “It looks like Shan Takhu technology.” The absolute lack of curiosity on her face led him to suspect that she knew exactly what it was.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s that thing you found on the deck, so it has to be.” She didn’t want to let him see anything in her face and he knew it. Since his accidental upgrade, his thinking seemed to be so much clearer than before, and now he could see the small contrivances of expression on her face like she was speaking her thoughts out loud.

  Kai explained that it was enhanced intuition, and although it was disconcerting to see through people so easily, it was often more amusing than frustrating. He knew she wasn’t lying to him, as much as it was just a game that she’d played with everyone. He’d suspected she worked this way since the first time he met her, and now he saw it for what it was.

  “It’s something the Institute built that’s based on Shan Takhu science,” he said. “I don’t think that’s quite the same thing.”

  “Stuff like that is what’s driving Jetaar and his pirates crazy,” she said. She squared herself toward the main viewscreen. That the STI is curating so much of the technology they have, so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands fuels his fire.”

  He patted his pocket. “Do you know what kind of power even something as insignificant as this technology would give someone?” He was enjoying playing the game with her. He understood why someone like Jetaar would hate the STI for hiding it. They’d set themselves up as the character judges of the Coalition. He felt more than a little of the same thing, now that he knew.

  “Is it widespread proliferation of that kind of tech they’re worried about or is it the loss of their monopolistic control of it?” she asked, her eyes flashing as she glanced at him. “If it gets into the wild, then they lose the power that comes with being the wizard.”

  “The wizard?”

  “When something is so advanced that it’s almost impossible to understand, it might as well be magic,” she said. “They base their survival plan on the idea that nobody screws with the wizard.”

  “Because you never know what other magic… or technology… they might have. Like minions that can walk through walls?”

  “And attack from an invisible flying fortress,” she added. “Or have a machine that can keep them in power forever. Wasn’t that the one he mentioned?”

  “He called it an immortality machine.” Marti offered.

  “Exactly,” she sa
id.

  “I wonder if that’s the same thing Kaycee calls the proxy chamber. It’s what they use to create the modifications on the STIFs.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I understand it allows them to make modifications on a proxy body and then import those parts into a living person somehow.”

  “If you could replace any part that failed, it might make growing old irrelevant,” he said. “So, the wizard never has to die.”

  “That is what Jetaar said.” She leaned forward and scrolled the sensor resolution up as she talked. “I think his burn is about what else they’re sitting on. Things even more…”

  He tracked where she was looking on the screen.

  “Are they moving?”

  “They’re closing fast,” she said.

  “All hands, here we go again,” he said, opening the shipwide comm, as Qara appeared at the door behind him. She’d been staying clear of him and this was the first time he’d seen her in three or four days.

  May I take my station? He heard her voice in his mind as if she’d spoken. He’d learned to tell the difference between thought and voice, and although she had not reached out to him telepathically since the day she’d altered his brain, he wasn’t surprised that they had this kind of link.

  He nodded, but she’d already dropped into her usual jump seat.

  “Make sure Nuko sees it,” he said. glancing toward Ammo. She’d already opened the intership comm channel and Nuko’s face was on the screen.

  “The last time they hit us they were at four light hours,” she said.

  “They’re in range then,” Nuko said.

  “Are we getting anything?”

  “No gravity bursts,” Ammo said.

  “Negative on the plating spikes,” Marti added.

  “What the hell are they doing?”

  “They’ve stopped closing.”

  “And now the party starts,” Ammo said as the sensors showed a gravity pulse in the middle of the wake. And then several more in rapid succession.

  “Are we detecting spikes in the plating grid?”

  “None detected so far,” Marti said.

  “Six total,” she said.

  “They’re on us this time,” Nuko hissed, her voice sounded like she was fighting to swallow acid. “We’ve got intruders in engineering. Multiple contacts.”

  “Not us?” he asked, feeling helpless. There wasn’t anything he could do but watch his own ship’s sensors and wait.

  “Angel’s on it,” she said.

  He thumped the arm of his chair with a fist and growled. “Damn it!”

  “Frak, they’re in a firefight,” Nuko reported. “They’re right on top of Reactor One.”

  “Shit, they’re in trouble. One stray round…” he said.

  “We can’t drive them off of it with stunners. They’re holding a defensive…”

  “Nuko kill your antimatter feeds,” he said realizing as he spoke, that her face had already vanished from the comm screen.

  “The Sun just dropped off cruise,” Ammo said, “We’re coming around and…”

  “Here they come,” Qara yelled into his brain and he flinched.

  “Quinn hold the reactor. We’re next.”

  “We’ve still got nothing—”

  “Multiple pulses,” Ammo said.

  “Multiple plating spikes,” Marti reported. “Internal sensor current drain shows six active boarding parties.”

  “We’ve only got a single reactor, the Sun has two,” he said, thinking out loud about the tactical situation in engineering. “Hopefully, that makes it easier.”

  “Quinn’s holding them off so far,” Rene reported. In the background he heard an almost continuous rattle of stunner rounds. “They came in almost right on top of the main power distribution node, but he was standing on the reactor.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Frak if I know, I’m under my console,” Rene said. “At least twelve. Maybe more.”

  A sudden booming roar rang over the comm. It sounded like a bomb blast.

  “What the hell was that?

  “Quinn’s got some kind of handheld cannon,” the engineer said. There was a rattling clatter like machine parts doing a dance, and then another round of thunder exploded.

  “We’ve got three negative spikes, and based on sensor current drain, at least three of the parties seem to have exited,” Marti said.

  Another ratcheting sound ended with a third blast.

  “Three more doorways closed,” it said. “We’re showing no active contacts.”

  “Run you squirrel balled bastards!” Quinn roared over the comm.

  “Marti, keep an eye on the plating sensors,” Ethan said. “Quinn, I don’t know what the frakking hell you did, but it worked.”

  “Grandpa’s pump-action shotgun at your service, Cap’n,” he bellowed, adrenaline still feeding his voice.

  “Ethan, the Sun’s got a problem,” Ammo said, reaching out and grabbing his arm to get his attention. “She’s on a local comm since their FTL systems are down.”

  “What’s your status Nuko?”

  “We can’t power down the antimatter flow. They damaged the control system and it won’t choke the feed. It’s running wide open.”

  “Dump the antimatter storage. Once you’re stable, we can cross-feed enough to get you home.” His heart froze in his chest. He knew she was smart enough to have already given that order.

  “Elias tried to jettison the storage chamber, but it isn’t happening,” she said. “When we made the mods to cut in the big gun, we cobbled them together. It looks like they wanted us to have to eject it, but the damage they did in the attack, left us no firing circuit.”

  “What does that mean?” He knew the answer already.

  “He says we’re going to have a runaway in under five minutes.”

  “Abandon ship,” he said flatly.

  “I gave the order.” Her voice echoed his own empty tone. “We’re moving but we might not make it. I ordered Angel to shove the passengers into the payload containers and I’m cutting them loose. If I can get some feet happening, I’ll get some distance. It’s the best I can do and if they get lucky, they might make it.”

  “I meant you too. Get out of there.” His emptiness started to fill with something much heavier.

  Ammo shook her head.

  “I’ll get to a shuttle if I can.” The comm hissed into silence.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Get her back on the comm,” Ethan barked.

  “Nogo. She cut it from her end and they’re refusing to reestablish a channel,” Ammo said. Frustration edged her voice with steel.

  “What?”

  “She doesn’t need you giving her orders while she’s doing everything she can,” she said, dialing down her own emotions when she recognized what he was dealing with.

  “Can we get in and out fast enough…” He knew the answer. Five minutes. That wasn’t even enough time for him to get to his own shuttle bay, let alone maneuver in close enough to pull her out.

  The stars shifted, and he realized Ammo was lining them up on an exit heading. An antimatter explosion wasn’t something you wanted to be close to. Ever.

  Ethan don’t watch, Qara said in his mind.

  He felt her thoughts trying to wrap him like a blanket and protect him, but he flung her away. Instead, he dropped the sensors to one of the side screens and cleared the main viewscreen of the overlay. The view of space opened up unobstructed across the window.

  He brought up an enhancement overlay and centered it on the Sun. It magnified the view so he could watch for an escaping shuttle. He needed to see when they got clear. To know they made it out, so he knew where he had to look for them once the blast cleared. It might be inevitable they’d lose the ship, but he had no intention of losing sight of that shuttle.

  It was his lifeline too, and he had to cling to it.

  Staring out at the unfolding situation, everything slowed to a crawl as his adrenaline
pushed him toward a state of hyper-focused reality.

  The Elysium Sun eased forward on maneuvering thrusters. Four bright flashes told him that Nuko had blown the emergency clamps, securing the load to the cargo anchor blocks. A small gap appeared between the ship and its train of containers.

  In the same instant, the lights came on in the cabin of the Dropship Loader as it powered up. Its massive reaction engines gimbaled around, and the DSL slipped back along the string of containers to a lock-down point closer to the center of the load. The glow of its inertial coils ratcheted up as the power fed through the systems.

  It looked like one of Nuko’s crazy freefall stack grabs, and an ember of hope rose inside him. Maybe she jumped ship and is at the helm of the loader.

  Charleigh’s voice came over the open com. “Locked and loaded. On the pedal.” The instant its grappling arms snagged onto the payload mounts, all four of the DSL engines fired and the gap between the cargo and the ship stretched out. They had to be pushing at least five-G rearward while the Sun still lumbered forward under its own inertia.

  Maybe it is coasting and Nuko is making her way to a shuttle? The ember flickered yet refused to die.

  The distance between the payload and the ship widened. Then the reaction drive on the ship came on. The coils were still dark, so it was a pure brute force effort. Another layer of dread settled over the spark of hope he clung to. Someone was still at the helm.

  “She’s going to make it,” he whispered, more to give his mind something to hang onto than out of any rational belief that this would play out in any way that ended well.

  He realized the pointlessness of his thought, even as he voiced it. The high acceleration would be crushing anyone still on the ship, and Nuko was driving the Elysium Sun.

  He could feel her sitting in the command seat, pinned in place and bolted to the boiling antimatter reactors. Unless she let off the engines soon, she would be riding the explosion all the way home.

  “Can we do anything?”

  Ammo shook her head. They were backing away to make sure they didn’t get caught in the explosion when it happened. Even at 2000 klick they were still dangerously close.

  “Here they come again,” Qara said aloud, her voice sounding like she was choking back a sob. She was still riding in his mind and he felt her even as he pushed her away.